“Keep the Truth Alive!” by James Ernest and Mike Selinker
Playtest Rules for Cheapass.com: 2/14/13
Notes for this version: Veritas is entering the final stages of playtest at Cheapass Games. We are mostly interested in some changes we’ve made to the board, in an attempt to balance the topology. We’d also like feedback on the graphics. For the most part, we are pretty satisfied with the rules, since this game has been kicking around for about 10 years. But if you have any feedback there, it’s also welcome.
This beta version will be live for a while, but we really only have until about March 1 (that’s two weeks!) to get your feedback into the game. Soon it will go to press. Soon…
Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 40-60 Minutes
Materials:
40 colored Book Counters for each player (use stacking microchips)
One Scoring Pawn for each player (or use an extra one of your chips)
Board showing cities and monasteries in France (4 pages in a separate PDF)
96 Burn Tiles marked as follows:
One for each monastery (marked with a number and letter, as in 2B, 12F, etc.)
Eighteen blank tiles
(There is a PDF called VeritasBurnCounters. Print this on labels, or just use it as a guide to hand-mark your own set of tokens. Thankfully, these will be die-cut counters in the final game.)
A box or bag for the burn tiles
Background: Welcome to the Dark Ages in France, where the Truth is struggling to stay alive. You and your opponents are aspects of truth that exist in books. These books are kept safe and copied in monasteries, which are located throughout France. Your goal is to become the strongest truth by the end of the Dark Ages, by having your books copied and spread throughout the land. Oh, and there is also danger. Nearly every year, one of the monasteries burns down.
The Board: The board represents France, in roughly the 14 th century. It’s not geographically accurate, so don’t try to use it for navigation or history tests.
The small spaces are monasteries , and the large spaces are cities . The straight lines are roads connecting the spaces. Your counters represent books, each containing one player’s truth. Books will be stacked up in cities and monasteries all over the board. Stacks can contain books of many colors. If your book is on top of a stack, you control that stack.
Shrinking the Board: For a three- or four-player game, you will use a smaller board. You do this by ignoring certain territories, and discarding burn tiles from those territories. All roads that lead into deactivated areas should be ignored. When you draw a tile from a deactivated area, set that tile aside and draw again.
For three players, you will use only nine of the twelve regions. You may use either the southern map , deactivating Brittany, Normandy and Champagne, or the northern map , deactivating Gascony,
Languedoc, and Guienne.
For a four-player game, deactivate two territories on the map: either Brittany and Normandy for the southern map, or Languedoc and Valentinois for the northern map.
For a five- or six-player game, use the entire map.

Setting Up: Give each player all of the books (the stacking counters) of a single color. Put each player’s colored pawn (or another counter) in the English Channel, near the beginning of the scoring track. Put all the Burn Tiles in the box, and mix them well.
Starting Positions: Starting with a random player, and proceeding counterclockwise, players place a stack of two books on any single monastery ( not city ) on the board. You cannot start within one road segment of another player’s starting point, and it’s wise to begin farther away than that.
After setup, the player who placed last will take the first turn, and then play will proceed clockwise .
On Each Turn: First, draw one burn tile from the box. If this tile represents a monastery, that monastery burns down . If this monastery has at least one book on it, there is also a free move , followed by a scoring round . If it is a blank tile, no monastery burns down. Return blank tiles to the box .
Burning Monasteries: When a monastery tile is drawn, that monastery burns down . Place the tile on the board on its corresponding space. If there were any books in that monastery , this will trigger a free move for the active player, and then a scoring round:
Free Move: The books in the burned monastery “run away,” which means that the monks from the monastery will flee, and spread the books through the countryside. The active player (not necessarily the controller of the stack) gets to move the stack by the move rules described below.
Scoring Round: When a burned monastery contains at least one book, this causes a scoring round.
Scoring happens after that monastery burns, and after the free move, but before the main part of the active player’s turn.
Players score points as follows: Each region is worth a number of points between 1 and 12, as written on the board. If a player controls a region, he scores the points for that region. To control a region, you must control more than half of the unburned monasteries remaining in the region.
For example, Anjou starts the game with twelve monasteries. If three of them have burned, you must control more than half of the remaining eight (that is, five monasteries or more) to control Anjou.
If you do, you will score 11 points.
Everyone scores on a scoring round, not just the active player. To count your score, move your piece along the scoring track. The first player to score 100 points wins. (If two people pass 100 in the same scoring round, the higher score wins.)
Turn Actions: After drawing a tile and dealing with the results, you then have your choice of three actions. Two of these actions ( copy and move ) are half-turn actions, meaning that you can perform two of them on the same turn (two copies, two moves, or one of each). The last action ( grow ) takes your whole turn.
Half-Turn Actions:
Copy: On any monastery where you have at least one book (not necessarily on top), you may place one new book on top of the stack. Owning the topmost book on a stack gives you control of that stack. Note that you cannot ever copy in a city .
Move: Pick up any stack of books that you control , and distribute them along any path as follows:
You may drop the first (bottom) book either on the space where you start, or on a neighboring space. From then on, you must drop one book on every space you visit, in the same order that they are in the pile (from bottom to top). These books land on top of any stacks that are already there.

You cannot use the same road segment twice in the same move, and you cannot drop two books in the same space. If you did not leave a book in your starting space, you may drop a book there later in your move.
Burned monasteries become open road . You don’t drop counters there, you just keep moving. This means that as time goes on, the board effectively becomes smaller.
Moving the stack from a burned monastery (the “free move” described above) does not count as one of your actions for the turn.
Full-Turn Action:
Grow: If you control all the cities in a region , you may “grow.” When you grow, add a new book to the top of every stack in the region that you already control . Growing does not happen in cities, or in stacks you do not control, even if you do have a book farther down in the stack. You can only grow once, and that takes your whole turn.
For regions 1 through 4, where there are no cities, you can always grow (it’s not better than two copies, however, so this is only relevant in regions 3 and 4). For any other region, you must control all the cities in that region to be able to grow.
Winning: To win, score 100 points. If two players reach 100 or more on the same scoring round, the player with the highest score wins. If this is also tied, the victory goes to the player who controls the single most valuable region . Or you can just be satisfied with a joint victory.
Strategy: In the early stages of the game, it’s important to make more books. Establish a region by owning its cities, plus enough monasteries that a “grow” brings several books into the game each turn.
After building some strength, you can spread out and try to improve your score. But beware: if you spread yourself too thin, you may find it difficult to maneuver in the endgame.
You will find yourself in conflict with other players fairly early. Be aware that players on your immediate left have an advantage over you, because of the order of turns. When all else is equal, attack the player on your right.
If someone makes a tall stack that you’re afraid of, move or copy on top of it, and take control. If you have another move remaining, scatter those books where they will do you the least harm, or use them to attack a third player!
Movement Illustrations: We will be adding at least three visual examples of movement.
First, we’ll show a one-color stack of three chips starting in a city, leaving one chip behind, and moving normally to cover two other chip stacks of different colors. This will also show no road segment being re-used.
Next, we’ll show a multi-colored stack of five counters starting in one monastery, leaving it blank, moving in a circle, and dropping a chip on the original space to finish.
Last, we’ll show a stack moving through a pair of burned monasteries and dropping nothing on those spaces, to demonstrate how burned monasteries become open road.
Credits: Veritas was designed by James Ernest and Mike Selinker. Full credits will be available in the printed rulebook, which will be available in your favorite local game store starting in the summer of
2013.
Send your feedback to Cheapass Games: Comment on our Facebook wall or send an email to cheapassjames@gmail.com
. Thanks for playing!